


Death's Waiting Room

by Merfilly



Category: DCU, Doctor Who, Marvel (Comics), Stargate SG-1, Vertigo (Comics)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-14 23:47:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1283257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of vignettes set in the Waiting Room with various characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death's Waiting Room

**Author's Note:**

> All deaths are canon or nearly canon (Teal'c, can't recall the episode title). These were published on my Livejournal over several years at the request of others.

Death kept her face impassive; sometimes they arrived in pain. She had to admit, dying was one of the more painful experiences to undergo in life. A slight smile touched her lips; that was such an oddly oxymoronic thought that she knew her sister Delirium must be thinking of her. Still, the arriving Hero needed her attention. And he was a Hero indeed, having sacrificed everything to save the entire universe. She frowned; she was sure that should be a plural noun, and wondered if something had upset Destiny's book again.

The Waiting Room had shaped itself into a futuristic lounge, set high above Earth. When the man finished coming to himself, literally, Death walked over and knelt down beside him, where he had fallen on hands and knees.

"Did I…is it…did we win?" he whispered, not yet looking to see who was there with him.

"Be at peace on that, Barry Allen. You saved us all from oblivion, even we Endless." She tipped his chin up, brushing his cowl back effortlessly. "And for that, I send you on." She smiled graciously, and he found himself waking to the smiling face of Iris, sometime far into his future.

`~`~`~`~`

The tide has turned to what they like to call normal. That means the deaths trickle in from many places, rather than her presence being needed at the site of one battle or another of their epic proportions.

She watches over the newcomers to her realm, watches when many of them are taken from here to places in the reborn multiverse. She feels for her Scarlet Speedster, seeing this rebirth almost as an insult to him.

He just shakes his head, running ever and always in the Speed Force, and lets her know both actions, then and now were necessary.

Death just smiles, and wonders how long it will take to placate Destiny, for the disorder of his Book.

* * *

He continues to stare at his hands, like he cannot believe they took a life. I don't have the heart to tell him that creature does not belong to my domain, that he never traversed the Veil. It would ease his immediate guilt, but leave him worrying even more about those left behind by his death.

Unlike some heroes I've had in here, he's not vainglorious, wanting to see just how the world is remembering him. That's a fresh change. In some ways, he reminds me of my Jason, but without the rough edge. Jason could never get accustomed to being here; it's why he prowls so much. 

"It's okay."

"I killed."

"You also died."

He blinks, looks up at me, then slowly around at my house. It's just the Waiting Room. I've seen the signs already, and know better than to bring him all the way in. After all, Delirium might want to keep him, and then I'd have to disappoint and distract her.

"I didn't know I could."

From any other nigh-immortal, it would have sounded pompous. He sounds... awed, maybe even relieved. I smile at him, nodding slowly.

"I think you are going to get better, this time."

He looks at me so sharply, and I can read her name on his lips even as he cuts himself off.

"Just remember, Clark, there's usually a price to pay." He nods slowly, but I add a warning. "Don't let it go to your head when you do... and remember who you always have been."

"Don't lose myself..."

Now the smile is wider; he really is super.

* * *

The man was gaunt, pale, and cloaked in voluminous robes that looked eerily familiar to the young man, barely more than a boy, just outside the big fancy gates.

"Not your place to enter, boy," the gaunt man called out to him.

Jason Todd looked around, seeing only that set of gates, and a small house in black and white with technicolor flowers that made little sense just back from it. "That's heaven... then I know I'm not supposed to be there." He wasn't bitter; he just knew he'd made mistakes. "Where's the other place though? When do you think they'll notice me missing?"

The gaunt man shook his head. "You're not missing from there, either, Robin. You just haven't reached your destination yet." He lifted a long, bony finger and pointed at the small, neatly presented house amidst its odd garden. "Ask her for a place to rest, until such time as it is all sorted out and you are called."

Jason looked, then blinked, because there was a pale goth sitting on an oversized toadstool, wearing a top hat and dreamily looking up through her parasol at the sunless sky.

"Who is..." His voice cut away as he looked back, for his guide was not there, and Jason really hated when they pulled that fade-away act. "Well, crap." He turned his path onto the gravel leading into the garden, to do what he had been told, just in sight of Heaven's Gates.

* * *

The sweet young girl in the top hat came back into the waiting room, looking at the sole occupant there with a sad smile.

"Still here, Ted?" she asked, watching as he tinkered on some inscrutable device.

"Yeah. Stephanie left yesterday. I think she went to an afterlife, not back." He looked up at her. "So, how long do I wait?"

"I haven't seen anything about moving you at all. I think you are my new Jason." She sat on the plush sofa, leaning her head back to watch him. He had to note that her hat did not move, yet one more weird effect of being in her Waiting Room.

"Jason, huh? Care to share, Dee Dee?" He kept puttering around on his latest invention, glad at least to have time to do so.

"Sure." She shifted to sit cross-legged, getting comfortable. "Jason was a tough little boy who got very hurt, and came to see me. He stayed a long time, never finding the Afterlife, nor being called back to Life. Then, a few months ago, I think, he was gone, and I had memories of him being gone for nearly as long as he had been here."

"Seriously messed up." Ted smiled at her. "I like the company here, so I'll try not to vanish."

"Someone edited Destiny's book; I know, I checked. So he got his second chance at Life, just a bit later than most of them do." She rose with a catlike stretch and came over to see his latest gadget.

"It's not working yet," he demurred. "I'm not sure I want to go back, Dee Dee. Even if I got a chance like that. We saw too many of my people, too many of the other side come through. What kind of world is it that could go to war just like that?"

She wrapped her arms around his waist, squeezing just a moment. "A world that realized they should have listened to you, Ted." She moved away, feeling the insistent call of someone needing her touch. 

"I wish they had," he murmured.

* * *

DiDi was carefully watering her collection of extinct flowers when the new one entered the Waiting Room. She set down her watering pot and walked slowly into the room, smiling brightly at this odd new denizen. She had a feeling Delirium would be along soon to meet him; his fashion sense and her sister's would lead to long, strange discussions.

"I'm not sure you should be here," she told him, getting a flash of a grin from him.

"I'm usually not supposed to be anywhere I go, according to many," he told her in a cheerful tone, before adjusting his scarf in all its many folds and length.

"Well, until I can sort it out, make yourself at home." She concentrated on the man, and was mildly surprised to sense he was concentrating equally on reading her. That made her smile again. "No, you don't belong here…Doctor? I don't think I have seen any of your people here in eons."

"If you are the living…so to speak…representation of Death, I'd say not," he retorted.

"Call me DiDi."

"Call me delighted," he told her with another easy grin.

"No; that used to be my sister." She sat on the couch, as he began prowling around. "You were on Earth when it happened?" He poked into just about every nook and cranny of the small, cozy room.

"Hmm, oh yes…Earth. My home away from home." He came and sat less than gracefully beside her. "It seems quiet here," he noted, as if that did not set well with him. "Ahh well, I've been in need of a vacation anyway. At least the other three aren't here to pester me. Especially Three." She cocked her head to the side, inviting him to talk more. She would solve the mystery of why a TimeLord had gotten misplaced later; good company was hard to find.

`~`~`~`~`

The pale girl with her black clothes and silver jewelry had to give a small sigh as the man in the trench coat walked gaily up the path to her doorway. He was swinging his arms, making the coat bounce, as she idly gave her umbrella handle a twirl. She had places to be, but it seemed she had an appointment who had found her.

"I thought we discussed this once before. With...number four?"

"Oh he's the past model and then some." The chipper thin man made a dismissive wave of his hand. "All the way up to ten, that's me! I suppose if I'm here, it must be eleven, though. I do hope he has a sense of style as good as my own!"

She shook her head; at least dealing with this Gallifreyan was a lot happier than most of the rest of the ones who had filtered through.

"I suppose you'll just have to make yourself at home, until we get you sorted out," she told him, waving him inside her home. 

"I just suppose I will," he said, accepting the hospitality with an over-the-top flourish of his non-existent hat.

* * *

Teal'c opened his eyes to see a quiet room, lit by candles and smelling faintly of the same incense he used for kelnoreem. He was in meditative pose, but had no recollection of starting meditation. Across from him was a woman with pale, almost white skin, black hair, and ancient symbols from what the Tauri called Egypt marked around her eyes in kohl.

"Peace," the young (not-young?) woman said. "You are in the Realm of the Endless."

"How did I come to be here?" the Jaffa asked, slowly flexing his muscles to find he was unbound. There did not seem to be anything to make him stay here, yet he felt a curious languid ease at doing just that. It was most unnerving in his mind as he analyzed the situation, that he could be so at peace in an unfamiliar setting.

"A small matter of your heart." She reached out, touching two black-gloved fingers to touch him on his broad muscular chest. "Wait for it," she whispered, more to herself than him.

"Wait for what?" He said it just before he felt a pull on his mind and soul, taking him down into sleep. As it did, the strange woman knelt up and kissed him lightly on the lips.

"Good luck, this time," she murmured, before he faded completely out of consciousness.

* * *

Desire was sitting at the table, looking vaguely upset at something, but Death ignored her sibling. When the pretty blonde stumbled in DiDi glanced at Desire, and confirmed this was the latest cause of the androgynous one's mood. No doubt, Desire had been attempting to understand the human condition under the slant of love and lust once more. Somehow this poor mortal had gotten caught up in the by blows of that experiment.

"Settle in, Miss Stacy," DiDi told her warmly, getting her full attention. The recently deceased made her way to the table, sitting in the open chair with the still-numb mindlessness of a sudden death victim.

"He tried, you know," Desire told the girl. "He honestly tried."

"What?" The young woman looked at the being across from her.

"Your young man, the one you were in love with."

"Peter? He tried to do what?" She was very confused, so Death walked over, laying a hand on Desire's shoulder.

"Not now. She'll learn as time goes by," Death warned.

"Tell me, please. I figure this must be … I don't know. Heaven, hell?" Gwen looked at the wedjat around Death's eye.

"Neither. It is my waiting room, for people like you, before they go to what awaits them," Death told her.

"So you are?" The blonde was focusing on the little things, to avoid thinking about the fall, or that last flare of pain, just before she found herself in this cozy little, white-picket fence type house. It was just the kind of thing she might have imagined for her and Peter, out in the suburbs. Peter, whom she would never see again… unless she was supposed to wait her for him. Maybe that was the reason she had not gone on to her reward. Maybe her true love had to be with her. She started to say something, but Death was looking sadly at her.

"No, it does not work that way," Death said sadly. "He has important things still undone. And it is time for you to go now." There was no ambiguity about Gwen Stacy; she belonged in the realm of Death, with no tickets back.

"What did, she? He? Mean?" Gwen asked, as death was leading her to another door, one she had not noticed. "What did Peter try?"

"To save you," Death murmured.

"But only Spiderman…."

"Exactly," the small woman replied, before ushering Gwen on, sending her to where she would not feel the pain anymore.

* * *

Even Death can be amazed from time to time. She is so busy staring at him, her top hat perched precariously as they sit in a Kansas wheat field, that she couldn't imagine what she should say. They'd done this once before and it hadn't stuck then either.

"It's peaceful here," he said, breaking the ten minute long silence. That is how long it has been since he ceased being aware of the pain, and found himself here, with the small woman in black, her face as white as the clouds above, and the dark gothic makeup on her eyes and lips. He thought he had seen her before, once in a while, usually when things of epic proportion had cost the heroes a member. Maybe he'd even seen her personally, but that was a hazy dream at best.

"It's tailored to your idea of peace." She smiled shyly at him. "You won't stay though."

"I can't; I have a mission." He can feel a strong pull, making him want to fly away to help whomever is in such pain.

"Eventually, even you will have to lay that aside, Kal-El." She stands up and throws her arms wide. "All this will be your inheritance one day, just as it is for those you protect." She bows with a flourish to him. "Right now, much as I'd love to have you meet my family, it is time for you to go."

"I'm so tired," he whispered, the pull of the pain-filled person mingling with an urge to sleep.

"I can't do anything about that, Kal-El. My brother may be persuaded to ease your mind, though, while you sleep." She watched him fade away, before going to find Dream, and tell him her thoughts on Superman's upcoming rest.

* * *

Death did not often have intrusions from people she would rather not be there. Her realm was inviolate, most of the time, from other dimensionally gifted beings. She had been having fun, laughing and chatting with the notorious flirt, Oliver Queen, when she felt him outside her door.

"Wait, hold that thought," she warned Ollie, smiling vividly for him. He had been good company ever since he arrived, strutting around with the vindication that he had made the best choice of all. She privately thought he was a little touched in the head for sacrificing himself rather than his gift, but she did not always understand these mortals.

"Don't keep me waiting too long, DiDi," he said in that shameless manner of his. She definitely had pegged him for one of her sibling Desire's creatures. She set her hat straight, picked up her black umbrella, and walked out of the den they had been watching television in. She stood out on the porch, to view the very powerful man in green and black.

"It's not time for you to be here yet, Hal Jordan," she said, unafraid of the ungodly power he wielded. The former flyboy frowned, and then forced his anger down to meet her gaze.

"Your houseguest will not be staying any longer," he said. "I've made a deal with other powers."

"This I know; it is why he remains in my Waiting Room, awaiting the correct time." She looked at him patiently.

"I just want to see him, to tell him…"

"That, Hal Jordan, is not allowed. Now go; your time to visit with me approaches," she told him, using her will to turn him out of the Endless Realm. Once he was gone, she smiled. "Not that you'll stay either…" She turned and went back in, to hear another story of how Green Arrow had saved the world single handedly.

* * *

The young man stared in dazed amazement at the scene all around him, his friends and father morning over the shell that had been him. Next to him a small woman in dark clothes and several Egyptian symbols watched neutrally.

"You can't come with me. Yes, he did just do what you asked, but watch…"

As she spoke, he could see those things, the spirits that had taken him, possessing enough power to do as they pleased even now… and some of them flowed into his unsuspecting father.

"You will be needed, to put an end to this, Joseph Wilson. Your power lets you elude me." 

He glanced at her, realized what she meant, that he had to go back on his own, and he moved to see into his father's one good eye. She made no effort to stop him, as she technically should have, before he had contact.

"Be strong, Jericho. I hope you protect them from the evil," Death whispered, leaving silently.

* * *

Death moved carefully to catch the latest flittering fragment with a sad sigh. She drew it close, reading the new experiences, and the final moment of death in the lines of its creation.

"Why so sad, sister?" Desire asked, lounged in a more masculine pose this day on Death's couch.

"It is the one they call Wildcat. This is the last fragment of his soul, save the one sustaining him now."

"How unusual. Do you often break their souls into pieces for slow collection?"

"No. But he was chosen by Bast." Death moved with the flittery soul to join it with the other parts. "When he dies next time, he will die for the final time, and I can release these to rejoin their other part."

"And if they were released before that time?" Delirium, who was once delight, asked, pausing in the creation of a rainbow colored frog.

"I would think they would try and find him again," Death said. "My, it must be time for my walk. Coming, Desire?"

"I think I will."

Both left, and Delirium was alone, with a question that had been answered by an ambiguous reply. In her mind there was only one thing to do... and she opened the jar to free the pieces of the soul.

Death just smiled.

* * *

All things considered, he should have been strong enough to kill his best friend. Wintergreen knew this, bone deep. Granted, he was not quite sure how he would have made it permanent, but it needed doing.

Slade had feared the immortality at first, a fact that should have been a warning sign. Then the nonsense of not only shoving Rose away to 'protect her' rather than taking responsibility, but forcing Wintergreen to also abrogate that duty had proven to be another warning sign.

The more people died, the less Slade had ties to the humanity still within him. The fear preyed on the growing disconnection. 

Sitting in the quaint little house with the charming Gothic child, Wintergreen had had plenty of time to reflect on where his duty should have lain.

DiDi tried to talk him through it, but the mere fact he stayed at her house, the waiting station, so to speak, gave Wintergreen hope that perhaps he would have that chance yet.


End file.
